What is the ECM Maturity Model?

Organisations committed to ECM principles typically progress through successive maturity stages, represented by the ECM Maturity Model. Several variations of the Model have been developed, such as by ECM3[1] and Gartner:

Level 1: Unmanaged

The enterprise does not formally manage content.

Distributed share drives and local hard disks serve as document stores, resulting in redundant data, inability to find content, and high levels of rework and end user frustration.

Level 2: Incipient

Functional or project-driven approaches emerge to managing some subsets of content.

Various technologies (e.g. DM, Collaboration) and competing/redundant products are deployed, but remain poorly used and insufficiently applied.

Level 3: Formative

The enterprise has inventoried content and puts plans, policies, and procedures in place, but remains in the process of implementing them –likely over several years.

Multiple projects are underway, but risk conflict and failure in the absence of a broader strategy. Notions of information life cycle management begin to get incorporated.

Level 4: Operational

Content is managed throughout the enterprise – albeit in diverse systems.

Applicable retention schedules have been applied to all critical electronic content.

The enterprise has also figured out what content not to manage, and has made space for social/collaborative content management as well.

Level 5: Pro-Active

Content management functionality is available broadly as a shared service and is viewed in the context of a broader services-oriented effort.

The enterprise can procure and incorporate new content technologies as needed, and plug into a flexible architecture to serve the business.

Solid understanding of core information management issues and key business drivers allows the enterprise to be more agile in the roll-out of new services.